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They may call themselves Libertarians but there is this competing idea that the path to liberty necessarily involves strong checks on both government and commercial organizations. But to work with these ideas it would be necessary to look beyond Peter Thiel's entertaining antics and that is difficult because there is such delight in giving him a pedestal and spotlight. What is liberty? Talk to Peter Thiel. He must really know all about that.

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That's not a competing idea. It is the idea.

The difficulty is knowing which checks are necessary and which are "big government". Which is why we vote.

Being anti big government is not the same thing as being anti all government. Characterising it that way is either lazy or ignorant, take your pick.

Libertarians of that stripe are essentially pro plutocracy, which would end up being massively anti liberty in practice.

But just as the winners write the history books, the richest libertarians like Thiel and Koch seem able to define what the ideology looks like in the popular imagination, because they can afford to shape the debate via think tanks, media ownership, campus outreach, lobbying, etc.

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